


Living Children

by Kunabee



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 19:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21021359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kunabee/pseuds/Kunabee
Summary: Fluff, with a slight undercurrent of angst. Inspired by the "what-if" idea of Asgore not killing any of the kids, but letting them live out their lives. Seven human SOULs... seven new mages. One broken barrier.





	Living Children

**Author's Note:**

> i love both toriel and asgore, but i also am pissed at both of them.
> 
> toriel: "i'll just let my children go out into the world alone to die because i refuse to be a decent queen and/or mother and protect them and my people"
> 
> asgore: "i'll just kill kids bcuz i don't want to start a war but my people need hope and also i'm mourning my children"
> 
> toriel is goatmom and asgore is goatdad but for fuck's sakes they both really need to get over themselves.

There was a day the Barrier broke.

Until then, Toriel had hope. She knew the seventh of the fallen children - her ninth child - was alive. They had to be - after all, the barrier would break as soon as Asgore had all seven SOULs. But after a year... the Barrier broke.

She sobbed, hiding in her room and locking the door as she mourned all of her children, seven of them dead by the hand of her ex-husband.

It took some time, but finally she, too, headed for the surface, blinking at the bright sun, staring with wide eyes in shock at it. It had been so long...

The camp was makeshift, and there _he_ was - Asgore, wandering about, laughing and helping his citizens. Anger flared up in her. _Coward_. One SOUL could have set them free if he had absorbed it. But... it looked like he hadn't absorbed any SOULs at all.

Then she saw them. She thought it was an illusion, at first - one human girl, dressed up in a tutu and ballet slippers, preparing a celebratory play for that evening with some monsters. A human boy was cooking, making sure everything was prepared. Only they weren't children, anymore. They were adults.

There was one child, though. Their hand on her paw, eyes wide as they looked up at her.

_Toriel_, they signed, greeting her. Saying hello. She breathed out, shaking her head in disbelief.

"Frisk," she said in response, kneeling down and hugging them close. They squirmed until she pulled away and watched their hands.

_I knew you come. The others said you'd be too sad, but I _knew_ you'd come out. That you'd see us._ They beamed up at her, all proud.

"How are you..." She trailed off. What a horrible question to ask a child! Yet they seemed unbothered.

_He couldn't do it. Apparently, after a few weeks of his declaration, he rescinded it. He said that humans who fell would be able to live out their lives, and only at the end of them would their SOULs be taken. It would be slow but the other monsters agreed. And so he raised all of us, taught us magic even. Seven of us fell finally, and when I learned what I needed to..._

"You broke the barrier," Toriel finished aloud, looking at her youngest child. Seven living children.

"You said to never come back." It was the eldest still alive, a man in his thirties now. He looked at her with hurt and betrayal in his eyes. "I wanted to. I knocked on the Ruins doors... so many times. But there was never any response. Never any way in."

"I texted you," said the girl who had fallen just before Frisk. She held pamphlets to her chest, standing en pointe in her slippers. "Over and over and over again."

Toriel swallowed hard. How many texts had she ignored, thinking that there was no possible way...?

"_Mom_," chimed a third voice, and she felt arms around her. The others joined the hug, and she hugged them back and cried for all the things she had done wrong, all the things she had failed. She had failed her children.

And Asgore had saved them.

She met his gaze from across the field. 'Thank you,' she mouthed, unable to do more. He just nodded, smiling shyly, uncomfortably.

They were alive.

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO yes. so. i exist. if you've been following me, you may have noticed that i have done just a few one-shots and no longer stories.
> 
> i have like. 3. fanfics in the works. 1 is a rewrite+improvement on 'memory transit' that i've been working on since i killed that. i'm very slow and keep restarting it.
> 
> nanowrimo is coming, i'm working on an original story i've had since i was 12. just gonna get it out and write it.
> 
> after nano... editing my novel because it's been 2 years and i still haven't, then working on the sequel for it, and in between working on undertale fanfics.
> 
> once i get ten chapters of my "main" fanfic (the 'memory transit' rewrite+improvement) i'm gonna start posting it. hoping for once a week, as i'll still be writing. maybe. goals. it might take a while still. y'know, another three years. (i HOPE not)
> 
> otherwise, i have a patreon, a tumblr, and my main blog.
> 
> kunabee.tumblr.com is pretty much entirely reblogs.  
kunabee.blogspot.com has original stuff.
> 
> woo.


End file.
